David Ogilvy's Ideas of Advertising

David Ogilvy is known as one of the primary experts in the field of advertising, and his Ogilvy on Advertising is looked upon by many of his peers as the definitive text on the subject. The purpose of this paper is to write a critical evaluation of what the book's primary ideas are, offering as many opinions and examples as possible.

Ogilvy wants to deal with all aspects of his career, and so he includes a section for the novice on how to break into the business. For the most part, Ogilvy emphasizes education. For example, he states that "to get a job in the Research Department of a good agency, you probably need a degree in statistics or psychology" (p. 35).

It is clear to the author that nothing can replace on-the-job experience, but he is a firm believer in the fact that a good liberal arts education is good preparation for the rigors of agency work. His comment that "copywriters may not be the most visible people in agencies, but they are the most important" (p. 32) could very well be a command to prospective ad writers to get a solid educational background in creative writing before focusing on advertising copy.

Ogilvy knows that advertising is a business, plain and simple. He is a great admirer of creative ad campaigns, but he still knows that advertising's bottom line is to sell its products. Often in the business it is difficult to ascertain exactly what an ad campaign's contribution to product sales is, but Ogilvy always comes from the point of view that

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ining the right mailing list from a good magazine subscription list. In this way a car company that wants to introduce its customers to a prestige sports car can concentrate on an audience the likes of Sports Illustrated instead of Mad magazine. Ogilvy knows that there is one aspect in technology that has helped to keep his "secret weapon" alive and well in the latter part of the twentieth century: "Computers make it possible for every letter in a mailing of millions to include the name of each addressee - not only in the salutation, but several times in the body of the letter" (p. 143). After reading Ogilvy's thoughts on computer-generated letters to consumers, it is much easier to see why he is so adamant about the system's effectiveness. The executive knows that if a form letter can be disguised by the new technology, there is a much greater chance that a consumer will read the message and assume that it was written directly for him. Just as Ogilvy emphasizes the importance of copywriting in the overall agency makeup, he is also a firm advocate of research and the role that it plays in developing an overall campaign. By outlining nearly two dozen ways that an agency can use research to its advantage, Ogilvy makes a goo

Category: Business - D